I SPY CRIME
A former Australian politician “sold out their country, party and former colleagues” to “advance the interests of a foreign regime” several years ago, Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Mike Burgess alleged. The ABC reports the unnamed MP even suggested connecting a prime minister’s family to an international spy ring (it didn’t eventuate). ASIO calls the ring the “A-Team” — a group of spies run by an overseas intelligence service who pretend to be “consultants, head-hunters, local government officials, academics and think tank researchers”, as Guardian Australia continues, who offer targets lucrative consulting opportunities to get reports on our trade, politics, economics, foreign policy, defence and security. The former MP has since cut ties to the A-Team and wasn’t considered a national security risk, but Burgess said Australia remains a priority target.
From spooks to cops now and NSW police commissioner Karen Webb has moved to dismiss alleged murderer Beau Lamarre-Condon from the force, Guardian Australia reports. Webb also alleged Lamarre had been “manipulative” to get access to the gun — there’ll be an internal and Victorian police review into its alleged use. It comes as cocaine, ketamine and hallucinogens like magic mushrooms are becoming more popular with the rich, the SMH reports. It’s the finding of the National Drug Strategy Household Survey from 2022-23 — 21% of our wealthiest had taken drugs in the last year, compared to 18% in 2019 and 14% in 2016. It’s also ahead of 2022-23’s overall proportion of drug takers over 14 (18%). Marijuana is the country’s most popular drug (11.5% of us). Blaze.
THORPEDOS
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers please note that this article mentions deceased persons.
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe told Parliament that Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus told her to “just be happy I gave you one recommendation of counting the bodies coming out of these prisons” during the Voice to Parliament referendum, an apparent reference to her calling for the government to implement all recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. It was the second time Thorpe tried to address the chamber after she was prevented from speaking in a Senate shutdown, something that prompted her to yell “wake up” at the chair. Sky News Australia’s Andrew Clennell said it was the same treatment she gave David Van when she started “screaming at the [alleged] perpetrator”, calling for Thorpe to be sanctioned.
Thorpe had been speaking about her first cousin Josh Kerr, a Yorta Yorta and Gunaikurnai man who died at Port Phillip prison in 2022. Earlier this month the Victorian Coroners Court heard Kerr called out “I’m dying” but prison staff didn’t act, Guardian Australia reported. Meanwhile, Labor frontbencher Malarndirri McCarthy says Thorpe used “reprehensible” language and made her feel “culturally unsafe” after the latter referred to her as “native police in [Labor’s] own ranks”. Thorpe said McCarthy was giving “black money” to the “police dogs” as Guardian Australia reported, but McCarthy responded that Thorpe’s words were “lateral violence” and that she proud to have police officers in her family (uncle and cousin).
LAW AND WAR
Labor MP Graham Perrett says we should change the rules so we can strip people of the Order of Australia, Guardian Australia reports, like former Brisbane Grammar head teacher Maxwell Howell. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found he knew about the allegations that a staff member Kevin Lynch abused a boy in the ’80s but didn’t tell the police or board of trustees, nor investigate himself. Howell died in 2011 and denied knowing about it. Meanwhile, we should have changed another law — banning gambling ads — by now, anti-gambling advocate Tim Costello said. The late MP Peta Muphy chaired a parliamentary inquiry into online gambling harm and recommended 31 things including banning gambling ads across television, radio, newspapers and online. “Governments typically respond to parliamentary inquiries within six months but the Albanese government has not yet done so,” the SMH notes. Dunkley will vote in Murphy’s successor this weekend.
Meanwhile, former PM John Howard is backing Gwen Cherne for former PM Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook, The Australian ($) reports. She lives in the Shire, but not in the seat — does that constitute the term “parachuted in”? Members will vote on Monday for the party’s candidate in the by-election (probably happening in April) with Carmelo Pesce and Simon Kennedy also in the race. So who is Cherne? She’s worked in advocacy for war widows, veteran families, suicide prevention and mental health after her late husband Peter took his own life following tours in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. Her life and work have prepared her for public service as an MP, Howard said. Plus, he added, it “doesn’t do any harm” to have more women in Parliament. What an amazing revelation. At the 2022 election, the SMH reported just nine female Liberals were elected, down from 13. Labor has 35.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
“Order 2,000 mini pies,” barked management at Tesla’s San Jose office. Raising one eyebrow, a staffer named Laura dutifully googled a local pie purveyor, chose Giving Pies, and picked up the phone. The person on the other end jotted down the order, replaced the receiver, and exhaled. The small business is a favourite among Silicon Valley for its homemade pies, but it had only recently transitioned from a home kitchen. There was nothing to it, Voahangy Rasetarinera figured — it was time to bake. Two days later, Telsa management barked another instruction at Laura: “Make it 4,000”. Rasetarinera asked her bake staff if it would be possible to double the order, and they obliged. No payment had come through yet, but it’s Tesla, she figured. They’re good for it.
While some 4,000 pies were neatly packed in their delivery truck ready to head over to Tesla’s office, across town management barked another order at Laura. “Cancel that pie order”. After receiving the cancellation text message, Rasetarinera was shattered. She thought about it for a week and decided to share her story on Facebook to show the difficulties small biz can face. Next minute, Giving Pies was inundated with well-wishing pie shoppers determined to prop up the shop, with a line trailing down the street. Even the mayor of San Jose popped in. Rasetarinera told the BBC she was “blown away” and “so grateful,” and when Elon Musk saw the story, he vowed to “make things good with the bakery”. It was then that Tesla management barked a fourth order: “Get 3,600 more pies”. Rasetarinera politely declined the order. After the public rallying like this, we don’t have enough stock, she shrugged.
Hoping you get what you deserve today.
SAY WHAT?
In fact, it’s landing really well right now. Cereal for dinner is something that is probably more on trend now, and we would expect [it] to continue as that consumer is under pressure.
Gary Pilnick
The multimillionaire CEO demonstrated the horrors of late-stage capitalism when he suggested people should eat cereal for dinner in this cost of living crisis.
CRIKEY RECAP
“In Melbourne, an estimated 25-41% of parking in apartment blocks in the inner city — which developers are often mandated by law to build — stand vacant. Such unused parking costs Australians more than $6 billion.
“For public projects, the cost can be even higher. The Victorian government recently announced a new car park for Frankston station, which will cost approximately $174,000 per space. That money could buy a lot of extra bus services or bike infrastructure, so people wouldn’t need to drive there. But as the Morrison years taught us, politicians still go to great lengths to cut the ribbons on new car parks.”
“The No campaign did not threaten voters with the spectre of death, but its strategy methodically pushed a negative spiral of emotions. First, campaigners created fear that there was more to the Voice than an Indigenous advisory body, threatening that it would lead to compensation and reparations. This fear was designed to make voters angry because they believed they stood to lose something if the Voice was successful.
“Threats of compensation and reparations were also tied to manipulative underground campaigning through conspiracy theories and fake campaign materials, alleging that non-Indigenous people might lose their property rights if the Voice was successful.”
“However, the transformation of the decision into yet another culture war by the media and politicians who either eagerly, or out of an inability to avoid the issue, have engaged with it, is emblematic of how our failing media operates. Like many culture wars, there is little or no substance behind it.
“It is a simulacrum of a public issue, which is why News Corp and the Daily Mail have had to expend so much breath inflating it into ‘uproar’ and apocalyptic consequences for the LGBTQIA+ community unless they fall into line, and Thorpe has to drag in wholly unrelated events to dress it up as a systematic problem requiring urgent prime ministerial intervention.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel still not close, says senior Hamas official (Al Jazeera)
McConnell will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November after a record run in the job (AP)
Alexei Navalny’s funeral to be held on Friday in Moscow (BBC)
Prince Harry loses court challenge over loss of security protection (CNN)
Israeli plan to expand settlements helped trigger US shift in language (Reuters)
OpenAI claims New York Times “hacked” ChatGPT in court filing (euronews)
Wellington earthquake: Magnitude 4.7 quake shakes lower North Island (Stuff)
Pope Francis taken to hospital for tests after reporting flu symptoms (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Gender pay gap outrage isn’t going away — Samantha Maiden (The Herald Sun): “Companies were named and shamed for the first time this week over the gender pay gap and the usual suspects crawled out of their multi-million dollar boltholes to shout there is nothing to see here. You see, as it turns out, women don’t really want to do the hard jobs, work long hours or get their hands dirty because it’s all about ‘choices’. The gender pay gap is all about pilates. These yummy mummies would rather cook organic raspberry muffins for the kids while going gluten-free ‘paleo’ themselves and getting their hair blow-dried. Or so we are told.
“If these glamazons wanted to man the garbage trucks? Hey presto, no more pay gap! Case closed. The only problem with this fact-free, feel-pinion garbage is that how does this explain the actual data, let alone every woman I know calling to scream at me this week that these hot takes that nothing is going on here are absolute rubbish. It’s so laughable, the idea that mothers drowning in washing, ferrying around three kids to every sporting event, staying up until midnight to clean the house after the kids have gone to bed and getting up at the crack of dawn to feed the dog, pack lunches and check the uniforms are dry before heading to ‘work’ don’t want to work? Okay. Okay. You’ve got me. The lazy sods!”
Some people are desperately averse to hard data – the gender pay gap is no exception — Van Badham (Guardian Australia): “Unrelated, the report was ‘useless data!’ according to rightwing, backbench opposition hollerer, Matt Canavan. According to Canavan, the real social problem isn’t structural inequality, it’s discussing the facts about structural inequality. It apparently ‘breeds resentment and division’ in some men to be reminded of women’s comparative disadvantage. Canavan continued on his conspicuously facts-unburdened theme claiming ‘the gender pay report is now the annual Andrew Tate recruitment drive’. He’s referring to the YouTube-famous misogynist now in home detention in Romania on charges of human trafficking and rape (which he denies) — so listen up, feminists! If you don’t stay quiet, there’ll be more boys flocking to rape-charged influencers, and it will all be on you!
“It does make one wonder why Canavan’s own party voted for Labor’s legislation when it passed Parliament unanimously last year, but logical consistency is as outre with the modern hard right as data and evidence. For the latter, Canavan substitutes bellowed insistence. For the former, Janet Albrechtsen delivers reliability; her column on the WGEA report was, reliably, awful. ‘The data does not compare men and women doing the same job in a company’ was not the ‘killer’ scoop she seemed to think, given that a) WGEA’s analysis is one that compares economic and industrial power and b) that information is explicitly stated in their report. To Albrechtsen, it was ‘temerity’ and ‘wickedness’ to hold corporate moral paragons such as, uh, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Telstra, Woodside and Santos to account for their role in structural disadvantage. Also, the WGEA data was ‘hollow, inaccurate tosh’.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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Activist Chanel Contos will talk about her book, Consent Laid Bare, in a webinar.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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British historian Peter Frankopan will talk about his new book, The Earth Transformed, at The Wheeler Centre.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Writer Carly-Jay Metcalfe will talk about her new book, Breath, at The Old Museum.